


Letters to the Lost

by creatureofhobbit



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 05:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11571579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Zach writes a compliment letter to Hannah to make up for the ones he stole.





	Letters to the Lost

Zach didn’t know why Hannah said he threw the letter away.

Maybe it was just the way things had looked to her at the time; it had been pretty crowded in the corridor and she possibly had a bad view. Maybe he’d dropped some odd bit of paper and Hannah had thought it was her letter. Courtney said she probably knew full well he hadn’t thrown it away and had just said that on the tapes for drama purposes or to gain sympathy.

But Zach knew that that was one letter he was going to keep forever.

He should have thought about how his actions might have looked to her. Zach was friends with Alex, who had started that list, and Marcus who had just tried to grope her in front of everyone at Rosie’s, as part of that stupid dare to see if Hannah was as easy as the rumours had it. Zach wasn’t even involved in the dare; but he was sat right there with those guys, it could have so easily looked to Hannah like he was part of it. And asking her out so soon afterwards, of course it looked to her like he was just pulling a Marcus on her. It was no wonder she knocked him back. 

But at the time he hadn’t thought any of that. He’d been humiliated at the rejection; angry at the way she’d dismissed him as being just like another Marcus or Justin just because he was friends with them, without even taking the time to get to know him. And in the moment, yes he had wanted to humiliate her back. But he understood now that the way he had chosen was stupid, that even his kid sister would probably think stealing Hannah’s compliments was childish. And he also understood now that it hadn’t seemed childish to Hannah, as it may have done taken as an isolated incident, but that in context with everything else that had happened to her, Zach’s actions were suddenly a lot more serious.

There was nothing more he could do for Hannah now. But he was never going to throw away the letter. He’d keep it to remind himself of what a dick he’d been at the time, and to remind him of the person he could be in the future, the person who put his actions in context, who paid more attention to the feelings of others, to be a better role model to his sister, to all the kids at school who looked up to him.

He’d heard of people writing letters that they were never going to send, to get themselves closure, and now Zach could see the value in that. He hadn’t bothered reading any of the letters people had written to Hannah at the time, and now a part of him wishes he had. Maybe in reading them he would have got to know the real Hannah, instead of the face of the stupid rumours started by the morons he hung out with.

So he took a pen and paper, started writing his own letter, of all the things Hannah should have heard back then, all the things he wanted to tell her now. He’d write Hannah the compliment letter she deserved.


End file.
